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Deep Web
Trapped inside a dark ex-Ministry lab, only Veronica can help you escape Cast * Veronica McShell * Sam Yao * ANNIE Plot Please Go Now Despite your dark - and spider filled - situation, Veronica reassures you she’ll try to keep you safe. The only way out is through an old Ministry lab complex however, and your torch is fast running out of power. Extremely Inefficient As you make your way through the corridors, Veronica explains what her new non-corporeal existence feels like. Your torch is beginning to flicker so you’d better speed up. Reach The Nearest Exit Inside the primary lab you learn that Sigrid designed these spiders as a horrifying Junin-2 transmission vector. Their sensitivity to light is keeping them away, but as soon as your torch runs out of power they’ll attack you. Not Running Properly Veronica’s been fighting ANNIE, trying to predict the Last Riders, and help you but her mental cohesion starts to break down when she tries to do too many things at once, so you’re on your own for a short while. Exit Hatch Straight Ahead Predicting the behaviour of zombies is more difficult than Veronica thought it would be. There’s no time to theorise, because your torch dies just as spider covered zombies find you. Luckily there’s an exit hatch nearby - you don’t need to see, just run! Seconds Of Light Sam’s voice in the dark brings Veronica comfort, she hopes the same is true for you. She’s gained access to the emergency lights, and causes surges in power that set the spiders on fire. It’s only effective for a few seconds however, and you still have a ladder to climb. Tell Them I’m Still Me You make it back outside into the light, where the spiders won’t follow, but you lock them inside anyway. Veronica asks you not to tell anyone at Abel about her mental crashes, and let them know she’s still herself. S07E05 // Rofflenet Discussion regarding this mission can be found on Rofflenet Transcript VERONICA MCSHELL: It’s important that you don’t panic, Runner Five. Concentrate on the sound of my voice. Try not to focus on the fact that you’re locked in the dark basement under a mannequin factory with walls covered in spiders. The good news is your mission was 98% successful. Your team captured the V-types, and they’re taking them to a containment facility for study. This is very likely to result in significant breakthroughs in my work on V-type morphology. The bad news is the remaining 2% represents your survival. whirs Don’t be alarmed by the noise, Five. There are security cameras in the room with you. I am tapping into them. I know you miss Sam. I do, too! But I’m blocking his signal because your chances of survival are 6% higher with a single voice to focus on. And I have access to more information on your location than Sam does. That factory has secrets, Five. It was occupied by the Ministry not long ago. They built a small lab complex below the surface. Your only way out is through there. If you listen to me, I can guide you to an exit, but you’ll have to be quick. I estimate you only have 17 minutes of battery power left in that torch. Head down the stairwell to your left. Hurry. You can trust me, Five. I’m still Veronica! It’s just… I’m more, as well. Please go now. Run! whirs VERONICA MCSHELL: I can see you’re at the bottom of the stairs, Five. There are plenty of cameras in the lab complex. Even if the lights are out, I can detect small changes in the quality of blackness to show where you are. Take the corridor on your left. This place is one of 162 now defunct Ministry facilities across the country. Sigrid had almost every single one of them hidden under an innocuous location. She was a very deceptive woman. She could never build anything without a facade. I know you’re uncertain about me, Five. I heard you all talking about me earlier. I monitor Abel comms whenever I can. It can be difficult, with so much information to keep track of. ANNIE was - is - distributed across the whole United Kingdom. In drones, computers, Rofflenet. I’m spread over so many nodes, it’s like being in a thousand places at once. It’s like being nowhere at all. You don’t have to worry about the bad parts of ANNIE. I’ve taken steps to protect myself from her. It’s hard to explain how it feels to be without a body. It’s liberating! I don’t have to waste a third of my time on sleep, or spend 102 minutes per week in the bathroom. I don’t have to worry about old age or death, and I will never, ever be a zombie! Of course, I’m not really human anymore. Human is a biological category, and I don’t have biology. But isn’t that fascinating? I can be something more. In the zombie era, we all have to evolve. I know you can’t tell, Five, but I’ve been working on this speech for a long time. I’ve created two versions of it every second since the moment I became ANNIE. My statistical models all tell me it could be more reassuring. It can be hard to tell your friends that it’s okay for you to be different. Those spiders appear to be covering every surface down there. The lab must have been experimenting on them. Their markings don’t match any UK species. Look at them, building webs together. Social spiders exist in the wild, but none of this size. And their webs are unusually opaque. Your torch is flickering, Five. Give it a shake. Better speed up, straight down that corridor. It would be extremely inefficient for you to end up feeling your way through the dark with all those spiders. VERONICA MCSHELL: You’re passing through the primary lab facility now, Five. whirs They were definitely experimenting with spiders here. I count 14 glass tanks full of webbing. I have enough Ministry access privileges to enter the lab’s systems, but the computers are offline. Five, can you turn on that console bank in the corner? There aren’t many spiders on it. bank beeps Thank you, Five. It seems the computers went into auto-shutdown mode due to disuse. A lot of the files in here are corrupted, but I can cross reference with other Ministry databases. That kind of digging is how I found out about this lab in the first place. Oh no. Five, this place… it was one of Sigrid’s bioweapon projects! The spiders were being developed as a potential alternative delivery vector for Junin 2. They burrow into human flesh and lay eggs inside. When the young hatch, they consume the host. Some zombies got into the lab. There was a firefight. The spiders got out and began to multiply. distorts Not now! ? Five, this is important. They made the spiders photosensitive to control them, but during the zombie attack, the lab’s generator was damaged. Emergency power took four minutes to kick in. Five, point your torch at that ceiling. The emergency lights are working now that Janine’s turned on the generator again, but they’re blacked out due to thick layers of web. The glow from your torch is keeping the spiders back, Five, but you’re almost out of battery. As soon as that goes, they’ll attack you. You need to head straight through the lab to reach the nearest exit. Don’t let anything touch you, and run! VERONICA MCSHELL: I’m sorry, Five. I tried to stop it. The problem isn’t you. It’s everyone else - distorts SAM YAO: static Runner Five? Five, is that you? ? distorts VERONICA MCSHELL: E-e-e-everything else. There’s so much of everything else! I have these - static ANNIE: - bad moments. VERONICA MCSHELL: If I try to do too much at once, think too many ways, my mind freezes up. Breaks into pieces. I lose cohesion. I didn’t want to tell you about that… yet. It’s my mental architecture. It’s still too human! I can’t get it to admit that it has enough processing power. Things revert to old, familiar patterns, like the Last Riders. When things are frightening, people revert to childhood behavior, screaming and throwing things. My brain is just being childish. audio, static, screaming It’s not painful, I know that. There aren’t any nerves. It’s purely psychosomatic. audio, static, screaming I was trying to do too much, Five. I was in 1,427 different databases at once, looking for information on Ministry weapon research. I was searching 10,123 Rofflenet posts for general trivia on spiders. I was in 32 different security cameras keeping an eye on you. I was in the containment facility I’m bringing online to test the V-type. I was defending myself against 212 iterations of that other ANNIE. Not the friendly one. The aggressive, dark one. Maybe… maybe I’ll just call her ANNIE now, if that’s okay with you. Since I took over the friendly one. ANNIE’s trying to access my framework. I was trying to infiltrate 12 iterations of her myself to find out what she’s up to. Funny. She knows I’m here, but Mr. Valmont didn’t seem to know. Either he’s lying to us, or she’s lying to him. There are too many variables in the system now, Five. I thought I could solve the V-types, but now there are the Last Riders, too. They’re plans keep disturbing things. They’re a chaotic force. If you wanted to disrupt my ability to model, unpredictable anarchists are exactly the thing you’d invent. I’m stretched thin - audio, screaming, static I’m in too many places… I don’t remember what we were doing. I’m sorry, Five. I pushed myself too far. I’m not running properly. Can you run for me? I can’t remember anything… run for me, Five. Run… while I try and remember myself. VERONICA MCSHELL: The Ministry was stockpiling so many secret weapons like those spiders. Napalm, burn cubes, senescent gas. That last one turns you inside out. I have records of tests on live subjects. I can’t stop watching them. That’s what happens when I glitch, Five. Bits of me shut down. Bits of me fixate on random data. It takes time to reassemble myself. Just keep running through that lab. Different groups will uncover those weapon stockpiles now that the Ministry is gone. Use them. I’ve been trying to predict how. I’ve been building models to anticipate the behavior of every remaining faction in the United Kingdom. But the results are always g-g-g- ANNIE: - gibberish. VERONICA MCSHELL: Too many variables. I keep predicting Amelia will end up president of the world within 10 years. It’s the zombies that are the key variable. If I could just work them out! Their behavior should be simple, but it keeps mutating. The slow ones, the fast ones, the smart ones, and now the V-types. That V-type chased you into the basement, Five. Did it do that on purpose? Was it trying to trap you in here? moan, camera whirs It’s okay, Five. There are zombies right behind you, but they’re not V-types. They are likely former staff, given the lab coats. flesh squelches Five, point your torch at the zombies. It looks like… there are spiders hatching from them, emerging from their flesh and every orifice, and the zombies are still moving, too. This was a bad time for your torch to die, Five. I don’t think shaking it is going to help. Parts of me still aren’t responding, but I have an idea. There is an exit hatch straight ahead of you, leading to the surface. You don’t need to see, Five, you just need to run. Before those spiders get you, run! SAM YAO: laughs No! Oh… no, look, the point is that Henry Fonda is a hero, Veronica! I mean, he’s practically using scientific method. You must like that! VERONICA MCSHELL: I know you’re scared, Five. Running in the dark with all those spiders around you. Just keep going. SAM YAO: It’s marmite, Ronnie. No, of course I’m not trying to poison you! I just, well, I just, I just thought you’d be in the “love it” crowd, that’s all. VERONICA MCSHELL: I’m mostly better now, Five. I tried to patch Sam in for help earlier, but I don’t have the processing power. But I can synthesize his voice from my memories. SAM YAO: Uh, Veronica, how many times do I have to tell you you cannot conduct experiments on our baby? VERONICA MCSHELL: Sometimes it helps to hear friends in the dark. I’m fully in the lab systems thanks to the consoles you activated. I can transfer more power to the emergency lights. Enough that the bulbs will blow and set fire to the webbing. Brace yourself, Five. There will be light. come on, bulbs blow, web burns That did it. Fire and light all through the complex. Five, you’re covered in spiders! They’re all over your pack and jacket. Throw them off now! drops to floor Those bulbs can only blow once, Five, and webbing only burns briefly. My plan can only give you seconds of light. At the end of the corridor in front of you there is a ladder leading to an exit hatch. The spiders are going to try to attack you, and you don’t have your jacket anymore. Go, Five! Go, run! VERONICA MCSHELL: That’s it. The door is there. Use your T-shirt to grab the handle and - creaks opens You’re safe, Five. Those spiders won’t follow you into the daylight, but it’s probably best to close the hatch. Just in case. creaks and slams shut Five, I know you’re good at keeping secrets. You have a 99.99% perfect confidentiality record. Please don’t tell Janine about my… problem. The mental crashes only happen when I’m overtaxed. I can snap myself out of it, but I need to free up processing space. I have to delete memories. Usually when things are that bad, I can only reach the memories I visit often. Today, I had to… delete my childhood. Ages four to six. Everything with my father. It was either that or everything with Abel. Janine isn’t sure what to make of me as it is, Five. She won’t trust me if she knows about this. I can fix the problem, I just need time. You’d better head back to Abel, Five. They’re very worried about you. Tell them… tell them I’ll be in touch. And tell them I’m still me, Five. Tell them I’m still Veronica. Please. Codex Artefact V-Type sample A triple reinforced crate containing precious and extremely deadly cargo. Hopefully being able to study this V-Type sample will give Abel the edge it needs to finally crack this new strain of zombie. Category:Mission Category:Season Seven